[20] From an Essay upon the Physical and Intellectual Education of Children, written by request of the Managers of the Pennsylvania Lyceum.
[21] Report on Manual Labor, by Theodore D. Weld, 1833.
[22] The testimony of M. Esquirol, whose talent, general accuracy, and extensive experience give great weight to all his well-considered opinions, quoted, also, and confirmed by the Physician Extraordinary to the Queen in Scotland, and consulting Physician to the King and Queen of the Belgians.
The same eminent author has recorded the following fact, illustrating the extent to which the temporary state of the mother, during gestation, may influence the whole future life of the child. A pregnant woman, otherwise healthy, was greatly alarmed and terrified by the threats of her husband when in a state of intoxication. She was afterward delivered, at the proper time, of a very delicate child, which was so much affected by its mother's agitation that, up to the age of eighteen, it continued subject to panic terrors, and then became completely maniacal.
Many illustrative instances might be quoted from medical writers in this and other countries. The author might also refer to cases that have fallen under his own observation.
[23] A man is not an idiot if he hath any glimmering of reason, so that he can tell his parents, his age, or the like matters. But a man who is born deaf, dumb, and blind, is looked upon by the law as in the same state with an idiot, he being supposed incapable of any understanding, as wanting all the senses which furnish the human mind with ideas.—Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i., p. 304.
[24] I have omitted much in the case of Laura that I should have retained but for want of room. The moral qualities of her nature have developed themselves most clearly. She is honest to a proverb, having never been known to take any thing belonging to another. That she is a Christian there can be no doubt. It is said in the report of her case for 1846, that "on the last occasion of her manifesting any impatience, she said to Miss Wight, her teacher, 'I felt cross, but in a minute I thought of Christ, how good and gentle he was, and my bad feelings went away.'"
[25] In a lecture before the American Institute of Instruction, on the Moral and Religious Training of Children.
[26] I would not be understood to recommend that any person who does not love the Bible, and the doctrines which it inculcates, and who does not seek after that purity of heart which it every where enjoins, should conduct devotional exercises in school; but I would respectfully inquire whether any who do not delight in such exercises, and who do not esteem it a privilege to lead the devotions of those under their charge, do not lack an essential qualification to teach school. Our laws generally require that the school-teacher be, among other things, well qualified in respect to moral character to instruct a Primary School.
[27] The day of writing the above, a lady mentioned to me the following gratifying illustration of my idea. The subject of it is a little girl only five years of age, who has never attended school, but has learned to read at home, under her mother's tuition. After reading in the first number of one of our excellent series of reading books, the story of "the honest boy" who never told a lie, for perhaps the twentieth time, the little girl said to her mother, "Mother, I like to read this story, for it always makes me feel very happy." Similar instances I have witnessed scores of times, in the family and in the school. Teachers may almost invariably lead their scholars to admire and copy the examples of good children about whom they read, and to dislike and avoid those of bad ones. This power over children should always be exercised for good.